The Cheater’s Guide to Real Food (or the advice I gave my grandmother)

When I tell you to eat the foods your grandmother or great-grandmother would have made, I’m not talking about my grandmother (see her above? isn’t she lovely! Good genes, yes? Hopefully they filter their way my direction.).

My grandmother is a busy woman – and she doesn’t cook. Not ever. Although I have a very vague recollection from childhood of the scent of pinto bean and ham soup wafting from a large pot in her kitchen; although it is a very vague (and isolated) memory.

So while you might recall your grandmother steadfastly kneading dough for bread, or perhaps you might find yourself reminiscing about licking cake batter off your fingers as you cleaned her mixing bowls, I have no such recollections; rather, I remember slathering margarine (or oleo) on white bread and eating over the sink with her so we didn’t have to do dishes – and we giggled, and told stories, and ate Oreos, and played.

And while my time with her was special and wondrous and marvelously fun – that time was not spent learning her cherished recipes (there were none), or baking brownies in a hot summer kitchen (we stayed by the pool where it was cool).

The last time my husband and I packed ourselves and the kiddo into the car for an extended visit with her, we cleaned out the cupboards, prepared some wholesome and nourishing meals. And when she asked how to eat better (without cooking much or spending much), this is what I told her. So if you’re strapped for time, haven’t much cash, are cooking for one or just don’t like to cook at all – perhaps you can glean something from these simple tips.

Buy a rotisserie chicken each week (and make broth).

If you’re strapped for time and even the thought of making my easy roast chicken seems daunting, do yourself a favor and head to the store and buy a rotisserie chicken. If you’re lucky, you might stop by Whole Foods and pick up a chicken there. Will it be pasture-raised? No, of course not. But it still fills your belly, provides meat and protein and its bones still make a good broth.

Pick the chicken clean, store its meat in a containers in the fridge and transfer the chicken frame to your slow cooker to make perpetual broth – it’s the easiest bone broth you’ll ever make, and your body will still benefit from the minerals and protein that leaches from the chicken frame into the broth. Drink a cup or two each day and, if your adventurous enough, pour it into a saucepan, drop in a few vegetables and make a super simple soup.

For those of you who still struggle to get in plenty of broth, and have a little more to spend, you can order traditionally made bone broth online here. They offer both chicken or beef bone broth that’s been simmered 24 hours to maximize gelatin production as well as minerals.

Ditch the multigrain and go for true sourdough.

While my no-knead sourdough bread seems effortless to me, if you don’t have time to maintain a starter or the idea of baking anything leaves you breathless with anxiety, there’s nothing wrong with heading to a good bakery to pick up a loaf of real sourdough bread.

So skip the balloon breads, the white breads and the multigrain, soy-enriched breads and choose something that offers better nourishment and flavor. All grains (plus nuts, seeds and pulses) need to be prepared in a way that deactivates naturally present antinutrients which bind up minerals, preventing your body from fully absorbing them.

Sprouting, soaking and sourdough fermentation all help to mitigate the effects of those antinutrients, deactivating them to a certain degree and making the full complement of minerals available to your body. If you’re not prepared to, interested in, or equipped to do this at home, do yourself a favor and buy real sourdough bread. If you don’t have a bakery nearby with real sourdough bread and don’t care to make it yourself, you can purchase naturally leavened sprouted grain breads online.

Skip salad dressing and use oil and vinegar (or oil and lemon juice).

Salads are quick, inexpensive, and easy to make at home even for those who somehow manage to burn water. Salad dressings, however, are often loaded with unhealthy fats: soy, canola and vegetable oils made from genetically modified organisms. Worse yet, these oils are a source of fragile, heat-sensitive polyunsaturated fatty acids and are subject to an extraction process that centers around high heat and chemical solvents.

Instead pick up a bottle of real extra virgin olive oil (you can find it online) and a bottle of raw apple cider vinegar or lemon juice and dress your salads with that. It doesn’t take more effort and it’s one of the most effective ways to begin eating real food.

Skip the margarine and use butter (or ghee).

Margarine, like refined vegetable oils found in salad dressing, is produced in a way that damages heat-sensitive polyunsaturated oils, and that’s the best case scenario. Often, margarine includes industrially produced trans-fatty acids, known to contribute to heart disease, metabolic syndrome and cancer. Even ostensibly healthy margarines sold in health food stores often contain soy protein isolate which can be difficult for the thyroid and the gut.

Margarine is also devoid of naturally occurring fat-soluble vitamins A and K2. Butter and ghee, by contrast, are rich in these fat-soluble vitamins and are prepared in by traditional, non-industrial means and are heat-stable.

You can learn more about why and how to choose healthy fats here. For maximum nutrition, take care to choose a butter or ghee that is made from the cream of grass-fed cows. You can find it many well-stocked health food stores (look for pasture butter) and online (see sources).

Pick up some yogurt or raw milk cheese.

You don’t have to make your own yogurt (but it is super easy), even picking up a good quality organic plain organic yogurt, drizzling it with a bit of honey and dropping in some fresh berries makes an incredibly good breakfast and is much better for you than the many yogurts that line grocery store shelves and contain food additives as well as high fructose corn syrup made from genetically modified corn.

Raw milk cheese, too, is a good source of food enzymes and a super simple and easy snack for when you’re busy or don’t have much time (or inclination) to prepare something more elaborate at home. We tend to buy a 1/2 wheel of locally made raw milk cheese once a year, but you can also order it online if none is available to you locally.

Sardines, anchovies and mackerel are awesome.

Small, oily fish provide much-needed omega-3 fats, protein and calcium. They’re also easy to prepare and inexpensive – simply open up a can, and serve them on top crackers or sourdough bread or over a salad dressed with real olive oil and vinegar, and you have a full, but simply prepared meal. No elaborate cooking. You don’t even have to dirty a pot.

In addition to being rich in protein, fat, calcium and omega-3 fatty acids, small oily fish are also a good source of vitamin D. You can find sardines and anchovies at many health food stores, but you can also purchase them online very affordably.

Boil a few eggs.

Pick up some pasture-raised eggs at your local farmers market or straight from the farm. Pasture-raised eggs are richer in vitamins A, D and E than store-bought eggs. They’re also a better source of omega-3 fatty acids and contain less cholesterol. If you can’t find pasture-raised eggs, you can buy omega-3 eggs which are produced from hens who are typically supplemented with flax, and the fatty acid profile of their eggs more closely resembles that of a true farm-fresh egg than the eggs of hens fed a conventional diet of soy, corn and industrial food byproducts.

Once you have your eggs, boil a dozen and keep them in your fridge – they can feed you easily throughout the week for breakfast, lunches or snacks.

Add fermented foods to your grocery list.

While we love fermented foods and most are very simple to prepare, you don’t need to make your own; rather, you just need to eat them. They’re rich in beneficial bacteria which help to support gut health, support immune system function and which produce vitamins in your digestive tract. They’re also rich in food enzymes which help you to better digest your foods, placing less of a load on your body’s organs, and they’re a great source of vitamins.

If you don’t have time to make you’re own, make sure to swing by a very well-stocked health food store and purchase real sauerkraut, pickles or kimchi (the ingredient list should be limited to vegetables, salt and perhaps starter culture or spices) and they should be stored in the refrigerator section. For ease, you can also order fermented vegetables online and have them shipped right to your door.

Skip the multivitamin and use whole food supplements.

Lastly, if your diet is less than ideal, or if you make lots of compromises as many of us do, consider choosing concentrated whole foods to supplement your diet. Unlike store-bought multivitamins which rarely contain natural vitamins, whole food supplements are simply super-concentrated, nutrient-dense foods. So when you consume these, you’re not consuming isolated nutrients; rather, you’re consuming foods containing their full complement of natural vitamins and minerals. (Read more about my take on whole food supplements here*).

I typically take (and recommend) liver capsules which are a good source of minerals, B vitamins and vitamin A. I also take a cod liver oil and high vitamin butter oil blend which offers healthy fats plus vitamins A and D. We also take a therapeutic-grade probiotic. You can find liver capsules, cod liver oil, high vitamin butter oil and therapeutic-grade probiotics online (I buy them here).

Read labels and learn to navigate ingredient lists.

If you’re like my grandmother and haven’t time or inclination to cook, you’ll still need to eat – so it’s important that you get to know ingredients and what they mean as you navigate store shelves. This Real Food Ingredient Guide – in a .pdf format – can help you to do just that, and it offers a little bit of insurance – helping you to navigate grocery store shelves, decode labels and pick the best foods on the market. And remember – always stick with single-ingredient foods – or, at the very least, ingredients that can be actually identified as a food.

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About Jenny

Jenny McGruther is a wife, mother and cooking instructor specializing in real and traditional foods. You can find her first book, The Nourished Kitchen features more than 160 wholesome, traditional foods recipes.

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What people are saying

First, the woman in the photo does NOT look old enough to have an adult grandchild or great-grandchildren!
Secondly, good sound advice. You’ve done a wonderful job of dispelling the ‘Eating well takes too much time’ myth.

You could have an adult grandchild by 50 if you and your child were teen parents…something pretty common.
Also yep loads of awesome 15-30 minute meals on taste.com.au and similar sites for the time-deprived.

JB, I’m in the Atlanta area too. Carlton Farms, our local raw milk source, also has pastured chickens available again. I haven’t done a price compare yet with WF, but I would assume they’re more reasonable. His pastured eggs are $5/dz instead of $7/dz at WF. They also provide a wonderful CSA–summer shares start in 2 weeks. Chad Carlton makes weekly deliveries in several places around the Atlanta area. http://www.carltonfarmsnaturalfoods.com/ Also, there’s a new fast casual pastured poultry restaurant opening in Ansley come September. It’s by one of the co-founders of Yeah! Burger. Excited to see great options growing in & around our city! 🙂

This is excellent advice. I do cook–at least I used to. Now that it’s just Hubz and me at home, it’s harder to get the variety we enjoy I’m learning to use the freezer. Your Perpetual Broth is so easy an great for a lot of things that call for water.

A REAL sourdough should have nothing in it but flour, salt, sourdough starter (sometimes referred to as wild yeast / starter culture etc.) and any spices or flavor additions. You have to be careful because some commercial bakeries mix flour with salt, water, vinegar and bakers yeast to produce a sour-flavored quick rise bread.

What a great post! My grandparents had all passed before I was born, well except one and she died when I was young. My memories of her are kind of funny. She was a chain smoker, she didn’t seem to like people very much, and she ate a LOT of pickled beet eggs. My favorite memory is making gingerbread with her!

I know both of my grandmothers weren’t really cooks but in their time real food wasn’t so hard to come by. Food was just food. My dad grew up on an island, and most of his family members were fishermen… what a generation! Society is so broken, getting food straight from the source is a lot harder than it should be. So many people think my family is odd because “we care so much about what we eat.”

Cat, our grandmothers sound so much alike! Mine chainsmoked and lit candles at the church while she prayed for bad things to befall her enemies. She really didn’t like to cook; fried eggs were as fancy as it got. But every Christmas she would make from-scratch fruitcakes for everyone in the immediate family, and no one could beat her thumbprint cookies.

Your tips were right on! When our sixth child was born about 14 months ago with some special needs and a 27 day stay in the NICU, I had to make several compromises. The rotisserie chicken was one of them, as well as several others you listed. I only wish I had known about perpetual broth then. The other changes I made during that time were to buy bagged salad mixes and pre-cut vege trays. I didn’t even have time to peel a carrot back then! You’re grandmother is definitely beautiful. <3

Great article, Katie! I think this is a very important topic because so many people are daunted by the ‘demands’ of eating real food. It’s easy to think that if you can’t do it ‘all the way’, why bother? So good to know that there are compromises we can feel good about!

I am not a fish oil person since it does not agree with me. For those that are opposed to eating any animal products, not me I still eat chicken, you can use UDO oil. It is 3-6-9 oil that provides the Omega’s 3-6-9, I add it to smoothies in the morning. You can also use it to drizzle on salads, which I do as well. 🙂 You have to keep it in the fridge though.

Another one of my cheats has been to add whey (that I drain from whole organic yogurt) to our store bought organic ketchup. I made the NT ketchup once and it tasted strange and was expensive, so this is what we do now. My husband also brought home some pickle relish from a church bbq and I dumped some whey in that to eat up all the unnecessary sugar. You can pretty much put whey in anything that has sugar to make it a healthier condiment!

And I’ve been afraid to make bone broth out of dirty bones. You don’t think you’ll get some junk in your broth if it’s not pastured animals?

The benefits that you will get from the bone broth probably outweigh the downsides. I’ve if the fancy markets near me does an organic rotisserie chicken, and the whole foods chickens are vegetarian fed with no antibiotics.

I had one of each grandmothers. My dad’s mom was very similar to yours except she did cook but convenience foods were they to go and I never remember her cooking much when we visited. We would normally go out to eat. My mom’s mother is another story. It is amazing to see my mom fight me on raw milk, eating real butter and other real food ideas since that is how she grew up! My mom grew up eating just as Weston Price teaches us – down to the cod liver oil, raw milk, fresh pastured chicken and eggs and all and now she is amazed that we eat like we do. I guess the government has done a great job of brainwashing her.

Jenny – thank you, thank you, thank you. I have been doing much reading and attempting to decipher how to make changes in my diet for better health; but, was so frustrated. I am single and work outside the home. Cooking for one and on a limited budget is challenging. This post was informative and presented a plan that will work for me. Keep up the great work. Your blog is much appreciated by this gal.

Thank you Jenny for putting this together. My son is going to be out on his own soon and we are somewhat new to eating real foods. This will be an easy summary that he can refer to. I really appreciate the time you put into all of your posts. They are very helpful to me and I’m sure many others.

All of this is fine, however I live in a tiny town and have to grocery shop in a town 35 miles away that is a slight bit bigger. There are no well stocked healthfood stores within 175 miles. I do most of my nonfood and vitamin shopping on line.
I would love to live this way because I am alone now and hate to cook which is why I manage to burn water. Used to love to but no more.

See my comment on UDO oil. I try to follow a mostly Vegan diet. I am mostly a vegetarian with a small amount of chicken and butter (sorry I will not give that up, lol). I do have a friend who is a total vegan and she got me started on the UDO oil because of my fish issues.

To say that both my parent’s moms weren’t cooks would be an under statement. My mom’s mother, as a fundraiser for a large charity organization, ate a lot of lunches and dinners out, and at home might scramble an egg. My dad’s mom was a painter/jeweler/sculptor, who resented anything that stole moments from her studio. I remember her pouring Campbell’s tomato soup on noodles to pass for spaghetti dinner, and on any given holiday, she unapologetically turned out dinners of canned cream corn, giant olive green canned peas , and roasts cooked to a cinder. {I venture to guess that if they hadn’t had Home Ec classes in those days, it would’ve been even worse! } The only thing that made our visits tolerable was that we were allowed to only nibble on the meals, and then make up for it by filling up on buttered Wonder Bread* and if we were good, and ate that healthy fare, we were then allowed to have as many Oreos as we pleased.

Compared to those ever-lovin’ grannies, my MIL was a gourmand. She raised her kids on the SAD diet, and her meals were quite delicious if you’re purely judging by mainstream woman’s magazine standards . It’s like she was brainwashed into thinking that if you have ooodles of money, you SHOULD use the Cool Whip, because dragging out the beater and then having to throw the utensils in the dishwasher is a burden no modern woman should have to endure. She doesn’t understand why I would “waste” money for things I can’t grow, on organic or Fair Trade. She’s got buckets of money, and she’s saying that, but – “Hellll-ooooo!” -have you ever figured out what it costs PER POUND, for jarred name brand herbs, (which grow like weeds!)spices, Shake n’ Bake, and the rest of that – I can hardly bring myself to call it – food?

In the early 70’s, as a new mom, I made it my business to learn how to produce our food from seed to table.

I guess it should have been no surprise when the grannies were less than supportive of my considerable efforts; several times we heard, “WE never bothered with all that Malarkey, and look how old WE are!” Well, ahem, all 3 of those grannies were raised on home farm food themselves. The ridicule came to a standstill when one by one, their own children, as relatively young ( in their 50’s) adults, began to have heart attacks and colon cancer and other ‘Western’ diseases.

It is sad to hear in the news these days, that the generation born in this decade is expected to be the first not to out-live, or even meet, their own parents’ age expectations.
Hope I did ok on this post; no time to proofread; gotta git out to the garden! 😉

*I’ve read that in the time of my childhood it was laced with latex in order to make it seem fresher by springing back. In subsequent decades, when Fiber was the buzz, some companies added wood fiber cellulose to up the count.

All great advice I would only add to eat as much fresh produce as you can. It doesn’t require cooking and is excellent for you. Eat fresh produce instead of canned produce or instead of processed foods.

I love this! I do just about all of these. I started the chicken broth while studying Nourishing Traditions, but your online cooking classes have been such a blessing and encouragement. Thank you, thank you.

Just recently I had an argument with some family members over saturated fat. I told them I feed my 14 month old, myself and my husband lots of saturated fats from good sources. They told me that I should be careful to what I feed my son. They went on to tell me I should limit them and I disagreed. I did some research and found there was no direct link with eating saturated fat and heart disease. I told them about Dr. Price and this is what they said to me. “Well the people he studied didn’t eat sugary or refined foods so the risk of having saturated fat outweighs the dangers of eating sugary, refined foods.” So pretty much he was saying that the only reason saturated fat is good in that scenario is because there weren’t a lot of other bad foods (otherwise saturated fat is bad). But if you combined sugary, refined foods with a diet consisting of a lot of saturated fat then that is really bad for you. What do you think? Oh, he also brought a book by Dr. Sears about the Zone diet or something and pointed out a paragraph about how saturated fat shouldn’t be consumed in large quantities. Dr. Sears also went on to say that we shouldn’t eat fatty red meats, organ meat and egg yolk.

I still feel I’d rather trust the roots than modern westernized eating habits. I don’t ever buy any processed foods, source all my meats, eggs and dairy from pastured animals (raw milk & cheese), don’t use any type of industrialized oils to cook with and barely go out to eat. I use butter (not raw, but pastured) and coconut oil to cook with. The only thing I’m guilty of is having some hagen daz vanilla ice cream and the occasional cookie (now I purchase the Jovial cookies). My son eats everything but any type of sweet or grain- never once has he had a goldfish or cheerios. So I feel pretty good about making sure we had a good amount of saturated fat in our diet.

Loriel- I think all of us “real foodies” can relate to what you have been through with your family. There is probably not a one of us who hasn’t had the saturated fat discussion at holiday time or other family celebrations. I know personally my friends have told me I’m going to kill myself with all this fat, yet on the other hand, will ask me why I have no wrinkles at 47!

It sounds like you are doing an amazing job feeding your family. I think Dr. Price would be proud! Try to tune out family members “advice” when feeding your baby. Remember, our brains are made mostly of fat, so you are making a genious each time you give your son egg yolks and organ meats. And as far as having the occasional cookie or ice cream, who cares? Even Sally Fallon has acknowledged that many primitive societies enjoyed something sweet on occasion. Its about balance, and a big thing Matt Stone is always pushing is to just stress less if we cheat on occasion. It is much better lesson for your son to learn to love many types of foods than to teach him the paranoia many feel of eating something that is not “allowed.” It is stressful to our psyches, which in turn is stressful to our bodies, which over time could become so stressful, it doesn’t mater what we eat because our body is so broken from the stress. Think like a French person and simply enjoy the food for the blessing that it is. Food taken in on a positive mind-set will nourish and heal the body, but not so much if we are stressed out.

Now as far as the family members who know better, have they even read Dr. Price’s book? Have them go to the WAPF website and look at the babies that are being nourished with real foods….gorgeous! Have them watch the movie “Fat Head” which explains the whole saturated fat thing quite well. The first half of the movie debunks the “Supersize Me” movie and I didn’t care for that part so much, BUT the second half explains perfectly how the government duped us with this whole fat myth thing. It features Mary Enig and Sally Fallon. You could also have them read “Death by Supermarket” by Nancy Deville. She has a website as well. She is sixty-something and eats a pound of butter a week. She looks amazing! And the Dr. Sears thing? After watching “Fat Head” you will see that he is the perfect government drone.

Just tell people you will consider their opinion once they have researched this the way you have. That usually shuts them up because most people can’t be bothered! Don’t worry, Mama! You are doing an awesome job with your son!! 🙂 Keep up the good work!!

And, if anyone gives you grief, say, “We ran this by our pediatrician, and he says it’s fine.” That usually shuts them up because no one wants to go against the doctor. And, feel free to lie about it. 🙂

Thank you for this! I have just started exploring the world of traditionally prepared foods, and it is extremely overwhelming considering that I have a demanding one-year-old underfoot. Some days it feels like a huge accomplishment just to cook a wholesome meal and keep the house semi-clean. Making my own bread, fermenting foods….not going to happen right now. It is nice to be reminded that it isn’t all or nothing!

This is a great way to get people to realize that it doesn’t have to be difficult to eat “real food”. It is simple and easy if you just stick to basic food that “grandma” would recognize. I love the tip about the store bought chicken. Why let anything go to waste? The bone broth will add the anti inflammatory profile to the meal and can really help with sleep.
thank you!

I love your ideas. I used all of them while we were rehabbing Dad’s house. (The cheese wasn’t raw, but gouda is great even when it isn’t raw.) We actually used cheese, fruit, and boiled eggs as our standard car food while making the weekly bi-state commute.

One thought, however, is that you still have to read labels. We found out that the rotisserie chickens at our local big-box store have MSG in the marinade. That was the last of that chicken.

Just a testimony for Udo’s 3.6.9. essential fatty acid oil since it was mentioned several times… I have a son who has seizures. His seizure activity was very low, and then all of a sudden they kicked up again. I couldn’t figure out why? I racked my brain, and then saw the Udo’s bottle buried in the bottom of the fridge. I had forgot about the Udo’s! He gets so many medications and vitamins every day, I totally spaced it. We added the Udo’s back in and within a week seizure-free again. Magic!

Jenny, I just wanted to say thank you so much for this. I’ve been following your work for quite a while and admire what you do, but as a single, working mom, many times my attempts at your suggestions have failed. I just don’t have the time/energy/budget in the 2 hours I have with my toddler between work and bedtime to do all the cooking for our day. I’ve killed sourdough starters twice. Soaked grains have been left and wasted. Good intentions start, but I needed some really simple, direct, to the point ideas that were more doable for someone like me. This post validates a lot of my efforts and I appreciate the stepping stones you offer. I feel a lot less frustrated!

Thanks for the great advice without the annalness! It’s overwhelming to try to follow all the healthy blogs out there. Soaking, fermenting, sprouting – it’s all good but sometimes I’m just not prepared. I’ve been a home cook for over 30 years because it’s cheaper, healthier and tastier. I’m now making sourdough bread in my bread machine – it’s awesome and easy!

Thanks so much for this. I used to be like your grandma but thanks to my daughter I’m changing my habits. She’s an exhausted mother of a pre-schooler and a baby who never sleeps but she manages to ferment and bake and cook everything from scratch. I now make kefir and bone broth and buy organic and feel so much better – still learning every day. Sometimes I send on tips to my daughter too. We inspire each other.

I love your information, It is hard for me to understand why people do not try to cook or make an effort, buying a box for a meal is foreign to me. It is so much less expensive to buy bulk flours and ingredients for the pantry, Many people don’t even know how to do this and I have to remind myself of that- it is second nature for me. your bone broth advice is great and I too make sourdough/sprouted breads. It is so easy to make a starter too. For me it is easy. It is what I do.
I hope people will read this information and that it will help someone to find their way to better food. I try to help/show people all of the time. It is overwhelming for some. thank you,